State prosecutors alleged that the university officials failed to tell police about sexual abuse allegations involving Sandusky, the university's assistant football coach, and then tried to cover up what they knew about it.

All three have said that they are innocent and were not aware of the allegation against Sandusky in 2001.

They said they had believed that Sandusky and the boy were engaged in nothing more than horseplay in a university locker room shower.

The 68-year-old was convicted last year of 45 counts of child sexual abuse. He still maintains his innocence and is appealing the 30 to 60-year state prison term.

Mike McQueary,a football team graduate assistant in 2001, testified that he saw Sandusky and a boy engaged in a sex act in the locker room shower and, within days, reported it to coach Joe Paterno, as well as to Curley and Schultz.

Charges: A poster of the three men who are now due to stand trial was displayed at a news conference in November last year

However, 59-year-old Curley, and Schultz, 63, claimed that Mr McQueary never reported that the encounter was sexual in nature, and Spanier, 65, has said that the pair never told him about any sort of sex abuse of a boy.

The three were charged with perjury,
obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly
report suspected abuse and conspiracy.

Those charges include allegations of hiding evidence from investigators and lying to the grand jury.

According to CNN, e-mails found during a Penn State internal investigation into Sandusky led, in part, to the charges against the officials.

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The e-mails show that the men decided to tell Sandusky to stop bringing children from his charity to the locker room after an incident in 2001.

Their 'conspiracy of silence' allowed Sandusky to abuse at least three more children on campus between 2001 and 2009, Chief Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer told the court, according to The Morning Call.

Curley
and Schultz were initially charged in November 2011, when Sandusky was
arrested, and they were accused of perjury and failure to properly
report the incident.